What is the basic process of an accounting audit?

As a rule, the accounting audit is carried out on the premises of the audited company, always preceded by a planning and the respective acceptance of the service by the contractor.

First, through sampling, some audit testing procedures are performed, aiming at:

• Verification of the integrity and adequacy of the accounting records;
• Cash and bank tests;
• Verification of the existence of stocks;
• Property, plant and equipment depreciation tests;
• Verification of financing, loans and other liabilities;
• Verification of the adequacy of taxes and their payments;
• Tests of the entity's income and expenses and its suitability for its objectives.

Below we list six essential steps that must be taken in the audit process.

1. Environmental research

In this stage, the preliminary recognition or understanding of the audited company's scenario is carried out.

It is done by collecting information about the business and its organization, understanding the operations and consulting the commercial and tax situations of the audited company.

2. Audit planning

With the information collected above in the environmental survey, the auditor moves on to the strategy termination phase, which is more effective and efficient.

Therefore, it specifies the procedures to be adopted to obtain evidence, including the application of tests to be carried out on accounting controls.

3. Internal control

In this phase, the existing accounting controls are documented in detail, and subsequently analyzed to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

4. Control test

In the control or compliance test, the auditor seeks to determine whether the accounting procedures are being complied with in accordance with the prescribed standards.

Therefore, the objective is to verify that the established internal control procedures are in effective operation and within the applicable rules.

5. Substantive test

At this stage, the auditor performs the substantive procedures to ensure the accuracy of the amounts and other information available in the financial statements.

6. Auditor's opinion

Finally, at this stage, the auditor assesses the results obtained in the tests and reviews the adequacy of the financial statements and explanatory notes, which will give rise to the audit opinion, written in accordance with Brazilian accounting standards.

What is the duration of an audit and how best to prepare to meet the schedule?

The first thing is to get complete knowledge about auditing and then perform actions. If you have no idea about it then it is must to join auditing course online and learn about it. Certainly planning is a determining factor for an accounting audit to be effective and still performed within the stipulated period.

For that, we recommend the elaboration of a schedule with all the steps of the process.

First, there must be a clear definition of the objects that must be attended to through the accounting audit. 

Second, it is necessary to define the audit criteria that must be defined by the audited company itself in cases of internal audit.

When we talk about external auditing, the criteria are defined by the external auditor based on legal norms or internal procedures to verify if the object audited is within the standards established by the specific rules of the audit or, still, by standards defined by the organization.